Sadhguru: If you go to a black magic artist, he will just ask for a picture.
Somebody can do negative things with the image of a person.
You try at home yourself: download an image of some serial killer, you see how it happens.
You know, people are sending pictures of their parents, or grandparents,
or their children just born, for blessings and...
you know, for various things.
So, if we can do positive things with the image of a person,
you must know, we can also do negative things.
In India if you go to a black magic artist, he will just ask for a picture,
because picture is a certain geometry.
If you understand the geometry of a person's picture,
you can create a geometry which will freak him.
Now you can create a geometry which will enhance him,
or you can create a geometry which is going to destroy him in some way.
So because of this, those cultures wherever this is there, people don't want pictures to be taken.
People who are in certain types of sadhana, even in India,
many sadhus and sanyasis, they don't want their picture to be taken.
But these days they cannot avoid, but unknowingly they take selfies.
[Laughter]
So, people are asking me, “Sadhguru, are you okay for a selfie?”
I said, “No selfies.” [Laughs]
Because these silly trends will come and go, life goes on beyond that.
These trends are... the thing is, nobody is willing to take a picture of you.
[Laughter]
So, you want to shoot yourself and put it all over the place,
which I think is... it doesn't agree with my aesthetics [Laughs]
that I take my own picture and put it all over the place.
People took pictures, and they want to put it, because they value it for something – all right.
Because an image has a geometry of its own.
We could have actually demonstrated if we had an image here,
or you try at home yourself.
Just for example I'm saying, take a picture of me
– a proper photo would be better, not a reprinted photo –
it would be good, but even a book cover, just hold your rudraksh, see how it goes.
Download an image of some serial killer,
I'm sure you are in touch with them on the internet [Laughs]
and check the rudraksh, you see how it happens.
It'll happen very differently.
And if you bring such a certain image folded, okay? Not my regular picture,
there are certain pictures where I'm in a certain state when pictures have been taken.
Folded picture – you don't know what is there – you create a few... what do you call them?
Placebo pictures, all right?
An empty page, something else, a grasshopper flying, a tree, this, that, everything.
If you have been meditating for a certain point of time,
mix them all up so that you can't see on the surface what it is.
Touch each one of them, probably many who have been initiated by me,
will immediately recognize which is the picture.
If they're not too confused, and this, that, simply if they touch it, they will know,
because just a 2-dimensional, or a flat surface of the picture,
has a geometry, and a unique geometry, and it's exuding that.
If somebody knows how to read this geometry,
he can create geometry either to enhance you, or to create trouble for you.
So, wherever such arts were popular,
people said, “I don't want my picture anywhere,
because I don't want to become vulnerable to somebody else.
My enemy wants to come and take a picture, I don't want my picture in his house,
because we don't know how he will use it.”
So, out of this concern, people would not allow pictures to be taken.